A Portrait of His Majesty
by allthegirlsarebummers
Summary: This is a future!fic with some leaning on "Rip Van Winkle" by Washington Irving. Ten years almost to the day after Prom, Kurt goes on a business trip to Chicago and remembers he knows someone who lives there. He makes a sleepy, wine-induced phone call.
1. Chapter 1

**PART ONE: I COULD BE SLEEPING**

Kurt Hummel caught the eye of the flight attendant and raised his wine glass in the air, shaking it slightly to illustrate its negative properties. Namely, that it was empty. The attendant took the glass from him immediately and replaced it with one full of the same white wine Kurt hadn't even realized he was enjoying so much until it was gone. He held the glass carefully and took a sip, looking around the cabin in a slightly buzzed haze of happiness.

First class. He was used to business class and had even deluded himself into thinking real first class sections on planes weren't anything special. How wrong he had been, he thought, putting his seat back, downing the rest of his wine in a few gulps, and stretching like a cat. He closed his eyes. It was only another couple hours to Chicago, but there was time for a nap before they began their descent into the Windy City.

He chuckled, thinking of his benefactress. She had a long name filled with elegance and the surnames of past husbands, but to Kurt she was just the Duchess. Whether or not she had claim to the actual title didn't matter. The old bat wanted to be called the Duchess, and the Duchess she was. Ever since she had brought Kurt on as her personal interior decorator and consultant, he had had to take on fewer other clients to support himself and his business in Manhattan. He was able to totally dedicate himself to what he had always dreamed: being given an entire mansion to decorate, room-by-room, in whatever styles he and the Duchess agreed upon.

Her taste was almost universally completely dependent on his idea of her taste. Traditionally, she would make a suggestion, look inquisitively at Kurt for several seconds, and then smile and nod and agree profusely when he would offer an alternative. This was how she had decided an oriental rug for the library was an absolute necessity: Kurt had decided it, and she had agreed. What Kurt had not counted on was that the Duchess knew a little bit about oriental rugs, and insisted he buy from her trusted seller—who had recently relocated to Chicago.

It had been years since he had been to Chicago. Some of his friends from high school had moved there eventually, but nobody especially close, except—oh, _right_. Kurt's eyes flew open and his heartbeat sped up as he remembered the one person he had once told himself he would never forget. The person who _had_ moved to Chicago, who he had assumed he would never see again but had always wondered about.

Kurt took a deep, calming breath, and decided not thinking about that was in his best interest for the moment.


	2. Chapter 2

**PART TWO: I COULD BE DREAMING**

Kurt had seen palaces during his junior year abroad in France, and the hotel that the Duchess had put him up in might as well have been the vacation home of King Louis XIV. It was lavish in all the right ways, and his suite was less a suite and more a penthouse. It was dichromatic, all whites and blacks and the shades in-between, and he smiled fondly at realizing the Duchess knew his taste almost as well as he knew hers.

The bellhop had set his bags on the floor by the beautiful black leather sofa in the middle of the parlor of the suite. Kurt stood for a moment in a sleepy daze, wanting so badly to just go to bed, but his stomach was rumbling embarrassingly loud.

The logical thing to do would have been to call room service. It made complete and total sense. It was what he would have done under literally any other circumstances. Had he not had three glasses of wine in the plane on the way over, maybe his brain would have been running a little differently, a little less deliberately toward the inevitable decision he knew he would make. Had he taken the flight attendant up on his offer of the sesame chicken on the plane, it would have been easy to just go to sleep, but the hunger in his belly was reaching toward his chest, tickling cruelly at his heart. Had he been in any other city but Chicago, he could have shrugged off the overwhelming urge to reach for his phone and dial that number that had sat in his phone for years between his college friend Belle and his go-to maintenance guy Boris. Kurt pressed the call button almost absent-mindedly, putting the phone to his ear casually, pacing the floor in front of the sofa more out of boredom than complete pent-up nervous energy. It probably wasn't even his number any more, he was probably going to get somebody else in Chicago, a struggling actor or a waiter or something, but certainly not—

"Hello?"

"Blaine?"

There was the briefest of pauses on the other end, and Kurt thought for a cold, terrifying second that Blaine had hung up the phone, had somehow recognized the voice, because he certainly didn't have Kurt's most recent number in his phone despite Kurt having his, and why would he hang up anyway, if it were Kurt, it wasn't as if they had ended things badly, per se—

"Yes, this is Blaine. Who's this?"

Kurt's mouth went dry, and his pretenses of collected calmness melted as he dropped sitting onto the couch into a huddled position and clutched at the phone with both hands. "It's Kurt. This is Kurt."

"Kurt—Kurt _Hummel_?" Blaine asked, and Kurt couldn't place the tone, but somehow Blaine had ceded some of the power in the conversation and Kurt was able to say,

"Yes. I'm in Chicago for a couple days, just landed. I was wondering if you wanted to grab dinner with me tonight. I know it's kind of late—"

"Oh. No, no… it's not that late. Uh, where are you?"

Kurt told him the name of the hotel and waited while Blaine looked up the address.

"Oh, that's not far. There's a restaurant about halfway between us, actually, this nice Italian place—does that sound okay?"

Kurt could have been imagining the note of hopefulness in Blaine's voice. Could have been. "That sounds great," Kurt said. "Do you want to just meet there in twenty minutes?"

"Sure." Blaine told him the name of the restaurant and they hung up, avoiding the awkwardness of a goodbye by replacing it with easier "see you in a bit, then"s.

Kurt stared at his phone in bewilderment. _Did that just happen?_ Then, in a panic, he grabbed his carry-on bag and fled to the bathroom to check his hair, moisturize his face and change his shirt.


	3. Chapter 3

**PART THREE: I'M FEELING AWKWARD**

Rosemary Clooney singing "Tenderly" started playing in the restaurant as Kurt opened the doors and went in. He swept his eyes around the restaurant, looking for Blaine. He wasn't sitting at any of the tables.

Kurt approached the hostess hesitantly and asked, "Did a man my age with dark hair come in? He would have been about five inches shorter. I think." _Unless he hit a growth spurt_.

She shook her head. "Sorry, nobody like that, but—" Then she stopped and tilted her head to look around Kurt to the entrance. She pointed. "Is that him?"

Kurt swiveled around and there was Blaine, smiling hesitantly.

He had grown, an inch or two. The first thing Kurt noticed was the lack of hair gel and that he was wearing glasses. He was wearing an oatmeal cardigan over a plaid button-down, and there was a hint of stubble on his face. Kurt suddenly felt insanely overdressed, wearing designer jeans and an embroidered dress shirt with a tie. He tugged self-consciously at his sleeves and bobbed a little on his feet before walking the three feet to close the distance to Blaine.

"Hi," Kurt said.

"Hi, Kurt," said Blaine, and opened his arms to take Kurt in a polite but warm hug. The close physical proximity reminded Kurt of his time at Dalton, before he was dating Blaine, of frequent hugs that meant nothing to Blaine, who gave them to everybody, but meant everything to Kurt. How strange things ended the way they did, after what those hugs had done to Kurt for so many months.

After a few seconds, they parted, each looking down awkwardly and fidgeting with their clothes.

The hostess interrupted their reverie with, "A table for two?"

Kurt turned back to her and nodded, then followed as she led them to a little table in the corner, away from the tables with children, closer to the tables with other couples. He looked back several times almost frantically, to make sure Blaine was still following him following the hostess. Each time, Blaine met his eyes with a tight smile, his face never lighting up like it used to when he saw Kurt. Not anymore.

They sat down. She asked if they knew what they'd like to drink. Kurt decided to stick with water, but Blaine ordered a glass of red wine.

"I had three glasses of wine on the plane," Kurt said, after she had left.

"Oh," said Blaine.

Kurt picked up the napkin folded into what looked like but was probably not a hat on his plate and fiddled with it, not meeting Blaine's eyes. After about thirty seconds of what Kurt would later tell Carole was the most awkward half-minute of his entire life, Kurt dropped the napkin in the plate and looked up.

"It's good to see you," he said to Blaine.

Blaine opened his mouth to respond, but then their waiter brought Blaine his glass of red wine and a basket of bread for them to split. He asked if they needed a few more minutes. They did.

"I guess it's nice to see you too," said Blaine. "It's been—what, six years?"

"Something like that. Since the Christmas party at Rachel's before I went to France."

Blaine lifted his glass of wine and swiveled it gently. "What's Rachel up to these days?"

Kurt shrugged. "I think she's doing Broadway. I don't really pay attention. I spend most of my nights working or in the East Village."

"Is that where you live?"

Kurt hesitated for inexplicable reasons before nodding. "Near Bleecker Street."

Blaine started. "I forgot that was a real street. Do you ever get that song stuck in your head?"

"The first couple weeks I did."

"How long have you been living there?"

"I graduated four years ago, so ever since then."

Blaine nodded. "What do you do?"

"You mean my job?"

"Yeah."

"I'm an interior decorator. I'm out here picking out a rug for a client."

"You came to Chicago just to buy a rug?"

Kurt laughed. "She insisted."

Their waiter came back, then, and they ordered food.

Blaine took a gulp of his wine and asked, "Do you live with anyone? In New York."

Kurt's heart sped up and his eyes fell to the napkin on his plate again. "I have a few fish. But I could never bear roommates."

"Ah."

Kurt looked up. "And what do you do?"

"I'm a librarian," Blaine said.

"You're joking."

"Not joking. I work in a library."

Kurt raised an eyebrow and leaned forward. "How did that happen? You were a double major in business and polisci last time we talked."

Blaine sighed. "I hated what I was doing. I took a lit class the spring of my sophomore year. It changed everything. I had this really cool professor, she used to tell us the greatest things about Melville and Hawthorne."

"So… you switched to English?"

"Yeah. Then I did my MS in library science. Just finished last year and was lucky enough to get a job in the city. And here we are."

"Here we are," Kurt echoed.

"So do you still talk to anyone from high school?" Blaine asked Kurt. "I keep up with Wes on Facebook, but that's it, really."

"I see Mercedes sometimes. She's in LA though, so it's rare. Finn of course, on family holidays. I didn't really keep in touch with anybody else."

"Sounds about right," Blaine said in response, and Kurt felt the ice wrap around his heart.

Kurt leaned forward and in spite of himself felt his eyes stinging a little with oncoming tears. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry I didn't … make more of an effort. But we broke up."

"_You_ broke up with _me_," Blaine reminded him. "Because you were going to New York and I was going to Northwestern and you thought you'd have a better time in college if you didn't have a ball and chain in Chicago. That is how I remember it."

"Blaine, please, we were sixteen when we started dating. Eighteen when we—when I broke up with you. It's hardly the stuff of a _Lifetime_ drama. Nobody marries their high school sweetheart." Kurt was saying these things, but they were only the repeated lines he had told everyone who had ever asked about Blaine.

"Some people do," Blaine said quietly into his wine glass.

Kurt leaned back in his chair and sighed. "I'm sorry."

Their food came and they ate quietly, reverting to half-talking about their jobs. Kurt told Blaine about the Duchess and the mansion he was filling slowly with lamps and armoires and, yes, rugs, and Blaine listened and asked simple questions. There were moments filled with silence that pierced Kurt through with their awkwardness, especially when he remembered all the times he had eaten or had coffee with Blaine in high school, and the silences were never awkward, they were always perfect and filled with smiles and hand holding.

Kurt paid for the check when it came. Blaine left the tip. They parted, shaking hands, and Kurt went back to his hotel, fighting back the tears until he was back in his suite.


	4. Chapter 4

**PART FOUR:** **IS HE YOUR HUSBAND?**

Kurt stared blankly at his phone for well over a minute. It was three in the morning. He'd slept a few hours after getting back from dinner and then come awake, suddenly, jolted from slumber by a dream of a memory. He had remembered Blaine coming to McKinley, that first day Kurt transferred back, and singing to him with the rest of the Warblers. It wasn't Blaine, so much, that had broken Kurt out of sleep; it was Kurt's memory of himself, of how his sixteen-year-old self had loved Blaine unabashedly and unconditionally.

Then Kurt had sat up in bed and held his phone in his hand. He had spent at least forty-five minutes remembering prom night with Blaine, and how that night they had left the dance with everyone else but then peeled off to Blaine's car, climbed in the back seat and just—touched each other. Kurt remembered the first hesitant move he had made toward Blaine, reaching his hand out to touch his boyfriend as if willed by an outside force. He had put his right hand on Blaine's cheek and then neck, and pulled him closer. They had kissed and Kurt didn't remember breathing for five minutes before he realized his hand had traveled of its own accord down Blaine's neck to his chest and then around to his side, where it had rested for a while, pulling on Blaine, bringing him closer to Kurt, until Blaine had turned his body and swung a leg over Kurt so he was straddling him. Then, Kurt's hand was joined by the other and he put his hands on the small of Blaine's back, always, always needing him closer as their lips met and didn't part.

Kurt remembered what came next: the pause before his hands drifted around Blaine's sides to the front of his pants. He had slid his fingers inside the band of Blaine's trousers and tried to pull him that way, and Blaine had come away from his mouth with a gasp. Kurt had expected him to stop what was happening, but instead when he looked at Blaine, he saw how Blaine's pupils were blown from the darkness and from the lust, and there was a hunger on Blaine's face that Kurt hadn't seen before. He remembered being surprised at himself for not feeling defensive or nervous about the physical intimacy, but Blaine made everything simple and easy, and it had only been a few more seconds before he had undone the button on Blaine's pants and cupped Blaine's hard-on through his boxer-briefs. Blaine had moaned in response and frantically grabbed at the hem of Kurt's kilt, pushing it up until he could in turn undo the buttons on Kurt's pants. Kurt had lifted up his hips just enough so Blaine could slide the pants down and make what was to happen next easier. And then Kurt remembered the mutual handjobs, Kurt getting Blaine off while Blaine did the same to Kurt, heavy-handed and blissed-out touching and rubbing and thrusting as they rutted into each other's hands and came together, for the first time. Kurt didn't care about the mess, about what his hair looked like, about his breath, about anything, in the moment after that: all that mattered was Blaine in his lap, breathing hard, and dipping his head against Kurt's neck to mouth sweetly at him and whisper the kinds of things Kurt had never thought he'd hear from another boy, let alone _this_ boy.

It was 3 a.m. and Kurt was still holding his phone in his hands, almost rocking as he contemplated the months following that night, as he thought about that insanely beautiful summer between junior and senior year, where he and Blaine, in the honeymoon stage of their relationship, had explored each other's bodies thoroughly and done everything and anything they could think of, thrilled and ecstatic and constantly turned-on by each other and the knowledge that they shared a trust so innate that one could suggest anything—literally, _anything_—to the other and it would be given consideration. They had lost their bodies to each other that summer, and with this their minds and hearts had gone, gone completely.

Kurt blinked rapidly through the sudden tears as he remembered senior year, things getting better with Blaine, but worse, too, as he could do nothing but think about their impending separation. He stopped enjoying coffee dates with Blaine because it just made him think _how many more coffee dates do we have left_ and he stopped enjoying phone calls with Blaine because he kept thinking _this is the only way we'll be able to talk to each other next year_ and he stopped having frequent dates with Blaine because he was worried if he ran out of things to say it would be such a waste of time, of the precious little time that they had left together, and he would feel guilty knowing it was his fault they couldn't find things to talk about anymore. By graduation, Kurt saw so little of Blaine that it wasn't so hard, really, to tell him they should take a break for college, that it would be too difficult with the distance, and they would meet other people and see what was out there, and maybe come back to each other eventually, if it was right.

But it never was right after that. Blaine had been ruined, completely crushed by Kurt, and Kurt had just taken a deep breath and gone to New York City anyway. He stopped returning Blaine's calls. After a few weeks he stopped returning Blaine's text messages. And the day came when Blaine stopped sending text messages at all.

The Christmas party had been awkward. Rachel had invited Blaine because they had been friends, a little bit, in high school, when there was still a Kurt-and-Blaine. She hadn't realized how estranged Kurt had become from Blaine, how painful it was for both of them to sit in a room together and interact politely as friends, when both of them hated and—still, inexplicably but how could they not, after what they had been for each other?—loved one another too fiercely for how-do-you-do and how-are-classes-going to suffice. Kurt had downed eggnog and talked with Mercedes about the architecture in Greenwich Village. Blaine had spent the night talking with Finn about football. And they had parted at the end of the night as if they had never seen each other at all.

Kurt jumped, violently, when his phone buzzed in his hand. He stared disbelievingly at the phone number. Blaine. Blaine was calling him. At 3:15 a.m. Kurt held his breath, almost not answering the call, but then, terrified he had missed it, had waited too long to answer, he pressed the call button and put the phone to his ear.

"Blaine?"

"Kurt."

At the voice, Kurt unwillingly let out a stifled sob. He rubbed his free hand hard on the center of his forehead, trying to clear away the muzziness left by the alcohol and despair that had reached him that night.

"Were you awake?" Blaine asked, his voice only a little unsteady.

Kurt nodded and whispered, "Yes, I've been awake. Blaine, I'm so sorry what I did to you. I've just been sitting up thinking about high school, about everything you were to me and—and everything you did for me—and did to me—and it was me, it was my fault, completely, what happened, and I stopped—I stopped doing what I should have been doing."

Blaine was breathing heavily on the other end of the line. Kurt heard the cracking in his voice when he asked, "What _should_ you have been doing?"

"Loving you back, Blaine. Just loving you. Giving you back what you gave me."

Blaine took a shaky breath and paused for a terrible five seconds. Then he sighed resignedly. "It was ten years ago. It's done."

Kurt whimpered and said, "Blaine, I know what I told you, that we were young, that it was stupid to think we could stay together—and maybe it was, maybe, maybe it wasn't all bad that I broke things off—but the _way_ I did it, I never stopped feeling bad about it. I still feel so bad, so guilty, it's like this knot in my stomach that never completely unravels when I think about you."

"We need to talk about this," Blaine whispered over the line.

"Okay. Come over," Kurt said wildly. "Come over and we'll talk about it."

Blaine laughed, and Kurt realized it was the first time he had heard Blaine laugh since high school. It made him smile, despite himself. "You have meetings tomorrow morning, Kurt. Look. It's the middle of the night. Let's… let's get coffee tomorrow, after your meetings. Coffee, like we used to. I think… we need to figure this out." There was another pause, and Kurt felt his heart leap into his throat. Blaine continued in a softer voice, "I just want this pain I've been feeling whenever I remember you to go away. We're twenty-six, Kurt. It doesn't make any sense to still be thinking about our first boyfriend. I've had boyfriends since you … I know you've had boyfriends since me. How could you not? But Kurt … hearing your voice today, getting dinner with you, why was that painful? Why did that hurt so much? It shouldn't—it shouldn't be like that for us."

"It's been a long time," Kurt said. "But I want to apologize to you properly."

Blaine made a derisive noise. "You don't, you already apologized, at least three times. It's not that we need. We need to—to figure out how to sort away the residuals from eight years ago. I—I need to talk to you about some things. And I hope we can figure this out together. But we'll do it when we're both awake and not—god, I'm sorry I called you—"

"_No._"

Blaine laughed again, and Kurt felt the trembling in his stomach, a resurgence from years past, when just a smile and nod from Blaine during a Warblers performance could unleash a cacophony of butterflies in his tummy. "Okay. No, I'm glad I called you. I've been up all night since dinner. I couldn't take it anymore … I had to call you."

"I've almost called you for the last three hours," Kurt said quietly.

Blaine breathed slowly and Kurt felt himself wishing desperately he could see Blaine's face. But it was right to wait. He would be a wreck in his meetings as it was.

"When are you done tomorrow?"

"Two at the latest," Kurt said.

"Then we'll meet at 2:30. I'll text you the name of the place."

Kurt felt a thrill thinking about getting texts from Blaine again. "I'll see you tomorrow?"

"Yeah," Blaine said. "Tomorrow, I'll see you then."

They said good night, and then each waited a few seconds for the other to hang up, before, giggling like schoolboys, they said bye again and hung up at the same time.

Kurt fell back into his bed with his entire body quivering at the promise of tomorrow. It took half an hour to come down from his nervous high, and then in his dreams it was only Blaine: Blaine in his uniform, Blaine in a tux, Blaine in nothing at all in his bed when Burt was on a weekend fishing trip with Finn and Carole was at a day spa. Kurt remembered Blaine like that, the two of them warm and soft and _everything_ in bed together, and almost slept through his alarm for fear of losing again the calm certainty he had had with Blaine ten years before.


	5. Chapter 5

**PART FIVE: I'VE NEVER DONE THIS KIND OF THING**

It took two medium drips before Kurt had enough caffeine in his system for meetings. He spent two hours in the morning discussing details of delivery and payment and returns with Leonard, the oriental rugs guy the Duchess is so crazy about, and then walked around his warehouse for hours, taking in the multitudes of patterns, shapes, sizes, colors. It was overwhelming. He could see why the Duchess had sent him here. Leonard had everything, and he had a soft way of speaking that was disarming and utterly charming at the same time. If every inch of Kurt hadn't been tingling with the anticipation of a later coffee date, he might have slipped Leonard his personal number, sent him his patented variety mix of Kurt Hummel Flirty Faces. As it was, he had thanked Leonard for his time and attention and asked if he could walk around the factory by himself. Leonard had said yes.

Kurt knew the shape he was looking for and had a few different color schemes in mind. It was the patterns that were difficult. He had always been good with patterns, always matching them into outfits where for any other person they had no right existing but for Kurt, they were perfect. He liked anything with clean lines but twisted concepts. He liked simplicity. He liked complexity. He liked squares, triangles, circles, rhombuses. _He liked Blaine._

Kurt stepped back abruptly from the rug he had been examining and closed his eyes, agitatedly putting a hand to the side of his head and working at his hair a little bit. _Where did that come from?_ He didn't know what he was doing, developing a schoolboy crush on his high school sweetheart, ten years too late. And Blaine was a librarian now, what was that all about? He wore oatmeal cardigans and glasses and plaids and corduroys. He lived in _Chicago_. The player might have been the one, but all his pieces were in the wrong place on the board.

Kurt wandered on through the hanging rugs, idly making notes on his favorites, his brain half on Blaine, half on the rugs, not able to commit fully to either. He narrowed down his options for the Duchess's parlor to three choices, but he couldn't figure out which one was the right one. He had Leonard bring them all down from where they were hanging and spread them out on the floor in front of him, but all he could do was look from one to the next in hopeless confusion. Which one? The elaborate one with the flowers and leaves and vines and shapes all beautifully tangled together? The bold one with the red? Or the one with all the boxes interweaving each other perfectly, like a grid upon a grid upon a grid with loveliness embroidered in each square? He liked all of them, and he knew the Duchess would like them all too. They would all add something special to the room, pull it together, but in different ways. The elaborate one for a sense of elegance and regality; the bold one for power and status; the boxy one for comfort, grace, a sense of belonging to a home.

In the end he called the Duchess.

"Yes, Elizabeth?"

She always called him that, since he had introduced himself to her as Kurt Elizabeth Hummel upon their first meeting.

"I'm having trouble deciding among a few rugs."

"Oh, darling, but you always pick the right thing."

Kurt sighed. "I like all of them. They would all work in the parlor. I don't know."

The Duchess was very quiet for several seconds and Kurt worried he had somehow offended her. But then she said, very gently, "Dear, is something wrong?"

Kurt stiffened. They didn't normally discuss their personal lives. He knew she'd had nine husbands. She knew he was gay. That was about it.

"Because," she continued softly, "you don't sound like the Elizabeth who left me in New York."

"I met someone," he blurted out, then slapped his hand to his forehead. _Why did I say that?_

"Oh, my dear! How perfectly lovely. Is he tall and handsome and dark and mysterious?"

Kurt laughed. "No. Handsome and dark, yes. Tall and mysterious, not so much. He's a librarian."

He could almost see the look on her face when she asked, very puzzled, "How on earth did you meet a librarian, dear? Did you need a book?"

"No, no. I know him from high school." He paused. She didn't interrupt him. "We dated," he admitted.

"Oh my goodness, your high school sweetheart! Now that is lovely. And he's a librarian now. But what—whatever is the matter? Why do you sound so glum about it?"

"I broke his heart," Kurt said frankly.

The Duchess breathed out heavily. She started talking, then, in a rhythm that sounded rehearsed but was not: she was not conversing with Kurt anymore; she was telling him a story.

"I knew a boy when I was your age. We went everywhere together, did everything together. He was my first love, after the harpsichord. I lost myself to him completely, and I think he felt the same way toward me. But I was poor and he was not—yes, there was a time when I was poor, just think of it!—and his parents had objections. He wanted to marry me, that one, but I wouldn't let him. I kept thinking about the look on his mother's face when she met my eyes. A mask for the utter contempt for me that lived inside her. I didn't blame her. I was poor, I meant very little to society, and society was very important, you know. So I broke it off with him, for her sake. He never forgave me. Drowned himself in a river."

"Oh my god," Kurt said, but then she laughed shrilly.

"No, I'm just kidding, but wouldn't that be a truly proper ending to such a pathetic story! No no, he married someone else, they have children. But I regret my choice every day, and I've married nine times since him, and had countless more lovers than that. But I regret saying goodbye to him. The look on that woman's face—what did it matter? She was his mother, but I would have been his wife. He chose me, and I chose him. But I gave up on it, because it was the easier thing to do. And I still think about him, every day."

"I do that with Blaine too."

"With Blaine, dear? Oh, that's your librarian's name, is it? You do seem more like Blain is your type than Ducky."

"I will never be seen with a man who wears duck shoes," Kurt said immediately.

"Of course not, dear. You would have chosen Blain too, just like Andie did. Although really I think Andie ought to have picked Ducky, I mean honestly, what a way to end a movie, but _you_, Kurt. You need your Blaine."

He didn't know what she was on about, really, but what she had said had hit him. He regretted breaking up with Blaine, regretted it so hard that he pushed it to the back of his mind until he forgot Blaine, until he didn't have to think about him at all—until he inevitably came up again and all the pain was pulled out again. Kurt clutched at his heart through his shirt and spoke slowly into the phone.

"Thank you. I think I know what to do now. But it will take a little time."

"Oh, Elizabeth, take all the time you need. A rug can be a very difficult thing to choose, let alone a lover."

Kurt said goodbye and called to Leonard. He asked him to have the three rugs sent to his hotel room. He would take his time picking one that night after he'd had time to refresh his eyes. Leonard obliged, and Kurt left the warehouse just a little before two. He checked his phone for text messages.

There was one. Kurt's heart skipped a beat as he hailed a taxi and climbed in, taking the Duchess's advice with him.


	6. Chapter 6

**PART SIX: DO YOU WANT TO DO IT NOW?**

Kurt had already rehearsed what he wanted to say twelve times in the cab on the way over by the time it pulled up in front of the coffee shop. He smoothed down his blazer unnecessarily and checked his hair in the window of the coffee shop before he opened the door and went in.

"Oh." Kurt looked around the coffee shop, nostalgia seeping in every corner of it. It could not have looked more like the Lima Bean if it had been the Lima Bean. The layout, the colors, even the biscotti in the display were the same. Out of a ten-year-old habit, Kurt glanced to the table that he knew Blaine would be sitting at. And there he was.

Blaine was wearing plaid under a red sweater jacket and his hair was a little more tamed than it had been the night before. He was still wearing glasses and he was reading a small leather-bound old book. At least, he was pretending to read it. It had been ten years, but Kurt still knew exactly how Blaine's face looked when he was really reading, and how it looked when he was pretending to read while his mind raced on a million other things. Kurt walked up to his table.

"You could not look more like a librarian if you tried," Kurt said to him without thinking.

Blaine started and the book closed with a snap. He looked up at Kurt with a face painted by old habits—his eyes big, liquid, staring at Kurt like he was the only thing in the world that mattered, and his mouth in a loose grin—before his face changed and was replaced with a heartbreaking mix of uncertainty and grief.

Kurt regretted his opening remarks being so flippant, and to make up for it, sat down quickly and leaned forward toward Blaine in what to an outsider may have looked conspiratorial if Blaine had leaned in too.

"I did really well in college," Kurt started immediately, going into his speech. "In high school, before you, I didn't know how to handle myself really, and plus there was no one to notice. But after you, in college, I did really well. I always had a boyfriend—or, at least, a boy, I guess—on the hook and I almost never slept alone." Kurt looked down ruefully. "My dad had told me not to throw myself around like that. I didn't understand what he meant. I guess I thought what he meant was, don't let myself get pressured into having sex with guys. I never thought I would be the one taking advantage of people. I broke hearts. Again and again. I met a guy at a bar, took him back to my place, had a night of it, and then stopped returning his calls the next day. It was like… I didn't know how to do relationships. It didn't make sense to me because what _we_had was so good, while I let it be good. But I never had a serious boyfriend after you. It wasn't like I couldn't have put in the effort—I just—I could never find the motivation to put in the effort. I always thought, 'I'm not going to marry this guy, so what's the point?' And so it went. I'm still in that pattern, though I have fewer opportunities now."

He looked up and met Blaine's eyes before continuing. "I have never felt so empty as last night when I was sitting across the table from you and I couldn't reach out to you, couldn't talk to you, like we used to. I knew, for the last ten years, how broken I made things, and how much I fucked everything up between us. But it didn't really hit me what I had been missing since then until I had it in front of me last night and couldn't have it."

Blaine bit on his lip and looked down at the book he was cradling in his hands. Kurt looked down too and saw it was a collection of short stories by Washington Irving. "That's the 'Sleepy Hollow' guy, right?" Kurt asked.

"Yes," Blaine said. "He also wrote 'Rip Van Winkle.' That's what I've been rereading since we got off the phone last night."

Kurt tilted his head and blinked slowly. "The guy who falls asleep for a hundred years and everything's different?"

"It's only twenty years," Blaine corrected. "He lives in New York and one day goes up into the mountains with his dog and finds these—I mean, they're probably like fairies, Irving never really specifies. He drinks some of their liquor and falls asleep, wakes up twenty years later, doesn't know what's happened, his beard is long, his gun is rusted, his dog is gone. He goes back down to the village and everything is just a little bit different. He fell asleep before the Revolutionary War and woke up after it, after the U.S. became independent. The bust of King George is replaced with a bust of George Washington, you know, little things. There are bigger things that are different, but it's the same town he grew up in, just, _different_."

"Sounds interesting—" Kurt started to say, but Blaine interrupted.

"That's what this is like for me. You're still you, but we're ten years on now and everything is a little bit different. I mean you're still that boy who—who totally broke my heart when I was 17, who skipped off to New York and didn't look back—"

Kurt tried to interrupt but Blaine waved him back with his hand.

"Even if you didn't mean it like that, that's how it felt. How it still feels. It's a bitter hurt, Kurt, and seeing you again brings it all back."

They were quiet for a minute, then Blaine said quietly. "I dated a little bit in college, and there was a guy in my master's program, but I never had anything serious—or anything like what you had either. I couldn't build relationships anymore. I could do friendships great, and all the platonic side of knowing somebody, that was easy. But even just—_kissing_—when every first kiss reminded me of that day in Dalton, when you were making the coffin for the bird… how could I do it? Everything hurt. Everything that reminded me of you hurt."

"I know," Kurt said softly. "Me too."

"But then I think, Jesus Christ, it was 10 years ago and we were in _high school_. How am I not over you? We were kids, it was first love, it didn't end ideally but why does it still hurt so much? It shouldn't. It shouldn't."

"But it does," Kurt whispered.

"I feel like Rip Van Winkle," Blaine said, looking back at the book. "But not like I just woke up. I feel like I woke up 10 years ago, and every day has been wondering why things are different than they should be. _We should have stayed together_. We shouldn't have gone to different schools, I should have been less obstinate about Northwestern, but my dad, and you know—"

"I know."

"When I decided to go there you had already pulled away from me, and I guess I thought, well, maybe the break will be good for us. I thought we were _too close_." Blaine shook his head. "But you thought the opposite. Even though we were together every day. I wish we had talked about it, back then. But it hurt so deeply, to see you pull away from me like that, and I don't know, my mom just said what you said, you know, we're young, we'll get past it, whatever…"

"I could have come here," Kurt said.

"No," Blaine said fiercely. "You belong in New York. I remember you coming back after Nationals our junior year and just exploding over how amazing it was. You were meant to live there."

Kurt sighed heavily. "But I don't love it like I did then. I mean, I really like the city, I like what I'm doing, I still feel really alive when I'm there, but it's not—as _special_ as it was that first time. I go to work, I love it, but then I go home and—I feed the fish, I watch TV, I order takeout, and I go to bed, and I wonder, 'Is this it?'"

"Something feels like it's missing."

"Yeah," Kurt said, and met Blaine's eyes.

Blaine tentatively slid one hand off the book and pushed it across the table, his fingertips nudging against Kurt's balled-up fist. Kurt opened his fist and reached forward ever-so-slowly, his hand laying over Blaine's, and then slipping around so their fingers lay flush against each other, Kurt's open palm to the ceiling, and then he curled his fingers into Blaine's and they were holding hands again.

Kurt looked down at their hands together and could have cried. "I missed you so much," he said, nearly whimpering. "I tried to force myself not to miss you, but every night all I could was: 'Why did I do it?' And I never had an answer for myself."

"I forgive you," Blaine said softly. "Because underneath the changes you're still that boy from ten years ago. And how could I hate you, when I loved you so much?"

Kurt nodded his head and they were quiet for several minutes. Finally Kurt breathed out and looked over to the counter. "I guess I should order some coffee?"

Blaine laughed. "Yeah, I already got mine."

"Still medium drip?" Kurt asked, smiling fondly.

"The very same."

Kurt began to feel things shift back to how they should be. It was an unlocking inside him, a change that didn't feel new but felt like things were becoming how they should have always been, as if in a parallel universe he had never broken up with Blaine, and all these years of pains had been the harshness of the dissonance with what should have been his universe—and now he was falling into sync with where he was supposed to have been all along. He and Blaine fell into their old patterns, the openness they had with each other, the teasing coupled easily with the sincerity, and their hands only parted briefly when Kurt had to retrieve his coffee from the counter.

He didn't think he could look at Blaine quite yet and think _mine_ but the simple ease in his stomach and his heart and his head told him this was _right_ and he needed to stay on this path, this path with Blaine. Between conversations about everything and anything, Kurt caught a glance of himself in a mirror on the wall and smiled wryly at the light pink dress shirt he had thrown on that morning that he had barely thought about. _Pretty in pink_, he thought. _The Duchess is always right_.


	7. Chapter 7

**PART SEVEN: IF YOU HAD SUCH A DREAM, WOULD YOU GET UP AND DO THE THINGS YOU BELIEVE IN?**

Eight hours later, Kurt realized a barista was standing awkwardly next to their table. He looked up at her.

"I'm so sorry to interrupt you two," she began hesitantly, smiling at him and Blaine, "but we're closing now."

"Oh my god," Kurt said, looking around the coffee shop, which was empty except for a couple more baristas standing amused behind the counter, watching. "How long have we been sitting here?" he asked, turning back to Blaine, who had his phone out and was furrowing his brow.

"Is it really 10 p.m.?" Blaine asked the barista in confusion, craning his neck to look at the clock over the door.

She laughed. "Yes, it is."

"We've been here eight hours?"

"You have."

"Kurt, I'm so sorry," Blaine said, lowering his voice. "I know you must have had so much else you wanted to do in Chicago."

Kurt shook his head and rolled his eyes. "Shut up, Blaine, don't even." He giggled and picked up his blazer, which had been shed hours earlier. "Come on, let's go get dinner, for some reason I'm hungry."

They apologized to the barista staff on their way out but were just countered with knowing and sweet smiles. Out on the street, Blaine stuck his hands in his pockets and tilted his head to one side.

"It's kind of late for most restaurants in this neighborhood," Blaine said, scratching his neck. "We could, um…"

Kurt waited for that sentence to finish but it didn't. After several seconds he supplied, "We could go back to my hotel and order room service?"

Blaine looked surprised. "Really? Won't it be insanely expensive?"

"The Duchess pays for everything." _And she'll be so happy I'm spending her money on you_, he added mentally.

"Well…" Blaine hesitated and looked away. "Look, I know we just had a life-changing epiphany-like coffee… date," he started slowly. Kurt tried to catch his eyes but Blaine studied the sidewalk carefully. "But what are we doing?" Blaine finally looked up at Kurt. "What are _you_ doing? Does this end tomorrow, like…"_Like with every other guy you've taken home the last five years_, Blaine might as well have finished.

Kurt winced. He deserved that. He sighed and held his hand out, open to Blaine. "I don't know. But I know I haven't had a conversation like _that_," and he jerked his head back at the coffee shop, "in years. Since high school," he concluded meaningfully. "And I don't want to say goodbye to you."

"You've said that before," Blaine said, his voice getting small.

"When I was sixteen and an idiot," Kurt said, sighing. He was about to take his hand back when Blaine carefully reached out and fit his fingers around Kurt's.

"Okay. Let's try," Blaine said.

They walked back to Kurt's hotel instead of taking a cab. It was a half-hour walk, and though they talked the whole way and the time flew by, Kurt was still uncomfortably warm from the hot summer night and the exercise. It was a long time since his Cheerios days, when a walk like this in the heat would have been a breeze. He breathed a sigh of relief when they walked into the hotel's brisk air conditioning.

He nodded hello to the security guard and front desk staff and led Blaine to the elevator. Once inside, Kurt shook his arms. "Ugh, I'm gross."

Blaine was watching him with dark eyes. "It was hot out," he said, but his tone of voice didn't really match the words, and Kurt looked up at him with a crinkled forehead.

"Yeah, I'm all sweaty." He stared at Blaine, feeling increasingly uncomfortable as Blaine didn't tear his eyes away from Kurt. Kurt held out his bare arm, which still had a few drops of sweat, as proof.

Blaine leaned in slightly, staring at his arm almost hungrily. "You have goose bumps," he murmured.

Kurt shivered, but not from the temperature. "The A/C is cold."

"Is that all it is?" Blaine asked, glancing up at Kurt. He smirked and took a step closer to Kurt, his hands reaching out and cradling Kurt's arm lightly. He pulled Kurt's arm up by the wrist slowly and then ducked his head and licked up along the inside of Kurt's forearm quickly.

Kurt inhaled sharply and jumped back against the wall of the elevator. "_God_, Blaine, you can't just—"

Blaine grinned, and stepped forward again, until he was pressed flush against Kurt. He dropped Kurt's arm and let his fingers wander up to Kurt's shoulders, and then to his upper chest. He pushed Kurt back against the wall softly and leaned in until his lips were pressed so, so gently against Kurt's neck. Kurt could feel his heart pounding wildly, and he struggled to stay still as Blaine let his lips glide to Kurt's clavicle, but barely maintaining any pressure. It tickled and the heat of Blaine's breath against his skin felt like it should be uncomfortable but instead was incredible and _everything_. A whine left Kurt's throat completely of its own accord and he squirmed under Blaine's hands.

At that second, the elevator dinged and they had finally reached the top of the hotel. Blaine pulled away from Kurt, and then held out his hand. Breathless, Kurt took it, and together they walked down the hallway to Kurt's suite.

Kurt let them in the door and started momentarily at the rugs laid out on the floor. "Oh, I forgot about them," he said.

"Those don't really match the rest of the décor," Blaine said, following closely behind Kurt.

Kurt took a few seconds to answer, his brain completely distracted by Blaine's close proximity. "One of them, uh, is going to the Duchess. I just couldn't figure out which one at the warehouse," he said. "I need to figure that out tonight." He fished around in the drawer of the desk by the door and pulled out the room service menu, then turned around to hand it to Blaine, who was closer than he expected, and staring at him with _such_ intensity.

Kurt breathed in sharply and dropped the menu. Blaine looked down at it on the floor, and then his eyes dragged pointedly to Kurt's groin. Seeing Kurt was half hard, Blaine's lips curved into a grin, and he looked up at Kurt. "Did I do that?" he whispered, putting his hands around either of Kurt's biceps. Kurt tensed and his breathing grew shallow and quick as Blaine slid one of his thighs between Kurt's legs. He pushed forward against Kurt and moved up slightly to breathe into the shell of Kurt's ear, "Can I still do that to you?"

Kurt shuddered under the weight of Blaine's body and he groaned when Blaine ground his thigh into Kurt. "Oh _god_, Blaine—" he gasped.

Blaine stepped back, and Kurt groaned in frustration at the loss of his touch. "Come back," Kurt said helplessly, holding out his hands and grabbing at Blaine.

Instead, Blaine smirked and crossed his arms. "I'm just interested in how this is going to play out."

In his hormonal haze of sexual frustration, Kurt couldn't comprehend Blaine's statement, let alone articulate a response. Instead he just moved forward lustily, grabbing at Blaine's hips, but Blaine danced back gracefully.

"_Blaine_."

Blaine laughed. "Aren't you hungry?"

Kurt's mouth dropped open and he shook his head, gesturing wordlessly at his body, so obviously turned on.

"Not that kind of hungry, silly," Blaine said, leaning down to pick up the menu for room service. "We were going to order dinner."

"Are you—are you _stopping_?" Kurt managed, moving back a step to lean against the desk, his head woozy from the blood rushing elsewhere.

Blaine paused and looked patiently at Kurt. "For now. I was just curious, if I could…"

"Could _what_?" Kurt asked testily when Blaine trailed off.

Blaine smiled. "If I could still make you fall apart like that."

Kurt barked out a mirthless laugh. "_Obviously_, Blaine. Oh my _god_."

Blaine's smile faltered. "Because, Kurt, you told me how many guys you've been with the past ten years, and…" He blushed and looked away sheepishly. "…it made me wonder if I was still sexy enough for you."

"_Shit_, Blaine," was all Kurt could say. His mouth was dry from panting and his skin felt like it was on fire, even in the cold air conditioning. "I can't—" He pushed a hand against his forehead to bring his mind back from its trip southward, and sucked in a breath. He stared at Blaine, at his perfect face, and his beautifully sculpted body, still small but muscular despite what must have been years cooped up in libraries reading books for his two degrees, and then at Blaine's hands, which had no right not to be wrapped in his. Kurt shook his head in disbelief. "I was such a fucking idiot," he said.

"You keep swearing," Blaine commented. "Is that one of the things new about you after my ten years asleep?"

"_You_ weren't asleep," Kurt mumbled. "I was."

Blaine didn't say anything.

"Do you feel the same way I do?" Kurt asked him softly, taking a deep breath. "Like today, everything came together again?"

Blaine licked his lips, but didn't answer.

Kurt took a half-step forward. "Because even though I tried to move on from that breakup, it still haunted me. I was always on edge, always searching, and no matter how many guys I slept with, I never felt any better. I felt worse," he admitted. "But today, putting my hand in yours again after all these years… that felt more _right_ than anything I've done for a decade."

Blaine rocked his head back and forth slightly and finally it wobbled into nodding. He smiled at Kurt, and Kurt felt all the darkness in the world disappear as Blaine slid his hand into Kurt's. "It feels right," Blaine said.

"It's not something they warn you about in sex ed," Kurt said lightly, twining his fingers around Blaine's possessively.

"What's that?" Blaine asked, cocking an eyebrow.

"How dangerous it can be to meet your soulmate in high school," Kurt said sincerely, putting his free hand around Blaine's back and pulling him in close.

"Do you believe that?"

"What, that I'm pretty much realizing I'm yours forever or that it's dangerous?"

"Both," Blaine said after a second of consideration.

"Yeah, both then, I do," Kurt murmured, kissing into the curve of Blaine's neck.

Blaine leaned into Kurt's lips and hummed a pleased note as Kurt bared his teeth and mouthed against Blaine's neck, lightly nibbling at Blaine's skin. "You taste awesome," Kurt whispered, blowing on his saliva on Blaine's neck and smiling at the goose bumps that rose up. But then he pulled back. "We should eat, though. I feel really light-headed, and I don't think it's just your presence."

"Yeah, I'm starving," Blaine said, looking down at the menu in one of his hands. He skimmed it quickly and said, "I kind of just want a burger and some fries."

Kurt laughed. "That sounds good to me. You want to order or me?"

Blaine smiled secretively. "I'll do it."

Kurt narrowed his eyes at him but didn't say anything. "All right."

While Blaine got on the phone on the other side of the suite room and ordered food and god knew what else, Kurt went into the bedroom and hung his blazer up. He hadn't worn it walking, so it didn't particularly need washing before he got back to New York City. Kurt paused in flattening the lapel of the blazer. Thinking about going home hit his heart heavily and he frowned. He liked New York. Loved it, even. Most of the time. He didn't really have a lot of close friends, so going out was almost always about hooking up instead of just hanging out, and his apartment was smaller than he would have liked. He probably could have afforded better at this point, with the Duchess, but he didn't want to take any chances. Maybe if Blaine moved to New York they could get a nicer apartment together…

"Hey Kurt?" Blaine called in from the other room.

"Yeah?"

"Uh, what do you want on your burger?"

Kurt went back into the main room and told him, then stood there raking his hand through his hair agitatedly. He saw Blaine looking at him curiously from where he was sitting with the phone still against his ear. Finally Blaine hung up and pressed his lips together, watching Kurt.

"What's bugging you?" he asked.

Kurt blew out a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding. "You asked me earlier what I was doing, what was going to happen after tonight."

Blaine got up slowly from the chair by the phone. "Yeah?"

Incredibly, Kurt felt tears threatening to build, and he almost laughed at himself. "I was just in the other room, thinking about … a possible future, I guess."

"Oh?"

Kurt nodded. "I can't even fathom you not being in it at this point. It's crazy, after just one day."

"After ten years," Blaine correctly quietly.

"Ten years apart."

"Ten years lost, when we should have been together," Blaine said fiercely. "Don't talk yourself out of what we just figured out, Kurt. We belong together."

Kurt smiled and felt tears break and slip down his face. "That sounds like one of my dramatic speeches from back in high school."

"You were smart then, too," Blaine said, and closed the gap between them. "It's electricity, what we have. And it's like for ten years I've been on a closed circuit just circling around myself with no purpose. But touching you again, talking to you again, being with you again, I feel _alive_. I feel like myself again. I feel like going out and singing karaoke and being ridiculous."

"That sounds like fun," Kurt said quietly, wiping tears out of his eyes. Blaine reached up and helped him wipe them away.

"It will be fun. And look, Kurt. I have a job here, and you have a job there, but fuck if I'm letting that ruin us with ten more years apart. Distance destroyed us back then, and I'm not letting that happen this time. And you're not either, okay?"

"Okay," Kurt said.

"Now stop worrying and let's order a movie to watch while we pig out," Blaine said.

Kurt laughed. "Okay. Good plan."

There was a TV in the main room as well as the bedroom, and for a second, Kurt hesitated about which one to set up in front of. But, he thought wryly, _go big or go home_, and he led Blaine into the bedroom.

They settled onto the bed together, and Kurt reached across Blaine to grab the remote off the nightstand. As he was leaning back, Blaine grabbed him around the middle and held on tight.

Kurt struggled briefly but finally collapsed, laughing. "Damnit, Blaine!"

"You're not going _anywhere_," Blaine whispered darkly into Kurt's ear, and Kurt shivered again, still not from the cold. Then Blaine loosened his grip marginally and said cheerfully, "But first, let's order that movie."

"What do you want to watch?" Kurt asked, turning the TV on and flipping to the pay-per-view channels. He immediately snorted at the titles.

"That all looks like porn," Blaine said.

"Yes, it does. It can't _all_ be porn…"

Kurt flipped channels until he found something that wasn't porn. He chuckled at the title. "_While You Were Sleeping_. Fate is kind of messing with us, isn't she?"

"Let's watch this one," Blaine murmured, and Kurt complied.

A few minutes into watching Sandra Bullock moon over Peter Gallagher, there was a knock at the door. Kurt started and immediately moved to get up, but Blaine still had a tight hold on him. Kurt turned to him, a vexed look on his face. "Blaine, come on. Let me go get food."

Blaine shook his head. "You're not going anywhere. You're staying here and watching Sandra take Peter to the hospital. _I'll_ get the food."

Kurt huffed in exasperation, but sat back on the bed as Blaine got up and left the room. In just a few minutes, Blaine was back with trays of burgers, home fries and soda. Kurt was slightly suspicious that that was all he had when he had been so secretive on the phone, but forgot about it when he bit into the burger.

"Oh my god," he said. "I haven't had a burger this good in _months_."

"They don't feed you in New York?" Blaine asked, grinning.

"I just usually order Thai or Japanese food."

"You don't cook?" Blaine asked. "You used to love cooking."

"It's just not as fun to cook when you're only cooking for yourself," Kurt said, smiling sadly. He popped a home fry into his mouth. "I used to cook for dad at home, and sometimes for you… and I cooked a lot the first couple years I lived in the city, when I was kind of broke. But once I started making money and I could afford it, it just didn't seem worth it. No one was seeing my brilliance."

"I'd like to see your brilliance," Blaine murmured, sipping at some soda.

"Oh, you will," Kurt said, but he couldn't think how or when or what needed to happen to make that a reality. Instead he focused on devouring his burger and the rest of his portion of home fries, which only took a few minutes. He stared at the empty tray. "I was really hungry," he said.

Blaine was just finishing up his fries. "Me too. Hadn't eaten since lunch. Oh, and that biscotti at the coffee shop."

Kurt smiled fondly at him. "I still can't believe we sat there for eight hours talking and didn't even notice."

Blaine looked at him with hearts in his eyes and Kurt felt his chest flutter, his heart pound. "It felt so perfect. It still does." He picked the trays up from the bed and got up, walking to the door. "I have a surprise," he said to Kurt over his shoulder.

Kurt waited impatiently while he heard Blaine messing around with the room service cart outside. Finally he reappeared holding another tray, circular, with a lid on it. It looked heavy, and Kurt had no idea what could be in it. Blaine set it on the bed carefully and then licked his lips. He smiled at Kurt.

"I hope you like this." Then he lifted the lid off and Kurt gasped in delight.

It was a fondue pot, with the flames still on underneath to keep the contents—dark, smooth chocolate—warm. Cut in pieces around the pot were apples, strawberries, pears, and bananas. There were two fondue forks resting on the side of the tray. Kurt looked up at Blaine, his heart bursting. "This is the sweetest thing—"

Blaine cracked up. "Tell me that pun was on purpose."

Kurt giggled. "If you want it to be."

"I do," Blaine murmured, sliding onto the bed and leaning across Kurt's lap to kiss him softly on the lips.

It was the first time they had done that since high school, and all the old feelings came flooding back even stronger. Blaine's lips were soft but sure, and Kurt felt his hands tense involuntarily when Blaine's tongue pressed into his mouth. He felt himself melting, his head light and his heart pounding, and he reached up and grabbed Blaine's neck, pulling him in, needing him closer. After what was probably forever, they broke away from each other, gasping. Blaine was still hovering over Kurt, and instead of backing away, his fingers went to the top button of Kurt's shirt.

"You need this off," Blaine muttered, working at the first button.

"Do I?" Kurt asked breathlessly.

"Might get chocolate on it," Blaine answered, smirking, and as he worked down to the last of the buttons, he swooped in and kissed Kurt's chest right above his left nipple, and sucked hard on the skin. Then his mouth was gone and he was pushing Kurt's shirt back from his shoulders.

"You too," Kurt said inarticulately, his hands fumbling at the bottom of Blaine's sweater. Blaine lifted his arms up and Kurt pulled the sweater off, tossing it somewhere on the floor where Blaine had thrown his shirt. Then he began working at the buttons of Blaine's shirt too. Blaine kept leaning in and kissing Kurt's cheek, neck, chest, mouth, and it made undoing the buttons a challenge, but in the end Kurt was successful and slid Blaine's shirt off him as well. He reveled in the sight of shirtless Blaine, something he hadn't seen since senior year of high school.

"Chocolate," Blaine mumbled against Kurt's shoulder.

"Pardon?" Kurt gasped as Blaine kissed a trail up his neck and behind his ear.

"We have all this chocolate. We really shouldn't waste it," Blaine whispered into Kurt's ear, then pulled away slowly.

Kurt watched with enamored intoxication as Blaine picked up a fork and speared a piece of apple, then dunked it into the chocolate fondue and swirled it around until it was completely covered. Then he put his hand underneath it as he brought it toward Kurt's mouth. Kurt opened his mouth and leaned forward to take the whole apple piece off the fork with a slurp. As the apple and chocolate melted together in his mouth, he smirked at the look on Blaine's face. Without taking his eyes from Kurt's face, Blaine pierced another piece of apple and smothered it with chocolate. Kurt ate it whole again, and Blaine was probably having a heart attack, the look on his face. Kurt licked his lips as Blaine reached for a strawberry and, holding it carefully from one end, swirled it around in the fondue.

He brought the strawberry to Kurt's lips and Kurt opened his mouth just wide enough for Blaine to push it in. Kurt sealed his lips around the strawberry and sucked most of the chocolate off, just for show, and then he bit into the strawberry, his eyes trained on Blaine's. Blaine let out a strangled moan and tossed the end of the strawberry back onto the tray before tackling Kurt, his hands around Kurt's wrists and pushing him down onto the bed. Blaine straddled Kurt's lap and attacked his mouth with ravenous kisses, his hands still pinning Kurt's arms to the bed. Kurt struggled a little, wanting desperately to grab Blaine in return, but Blaine wanted the control, and Kurt was more than willing to give it to him. Instead, he bucked his hips up into Blaine's groin meaningfully, and Blaine ground down into him.

Kurt wanted his pants off, _immediately_. His erection swelled almost painfully against his tight jeans and he could feel Blaine just as hard against him, though he was wearing more forgiving slacks. When Blaine stopped to take a breath, Kurt gasped out, "Pants. Now."

Blaine didn't need to be told twice. He slid down Kurt's body a little for easier access, and then undid the button and, carefully, the zipper on Kurt's jeans, then pulled them unceremoniously off. It was more difficult to wrangle his own pants, though, and Kurt pulled from underneath him to get on his knees opposite Blaine and work his slacks off him. Blaine fell over on his side as he pulled the slacks over his knees and Kurt couldn't help laughing. Uncontrollably, he laughed into Blaine's thigh, his eyes watering with tears. Blaine's pride, while a little hurt, couldn't withstand how contagious Kurt's laughter was, and he joined in. He leaned forward giggling into Kurt's side, and then calmed down enough to nibble a little at the side of Kurt's stomach.

Kurt stopped laughing as he gasped at the feeling and lifted up to meet Blaine's mouth. Blaine pulled Kurt up and then pushed him down onto his back on the side of the bed opposite the fondue pot. He carefully turned the flame off underneath the pot but then picked up another strawberry and dipped it into the chocolate. He brought it over to Kurt's chest.

With one hand spread-eagled, Blaine held Kurt's chest down as he let the chocolate from the strawberry drip onto Kurt's stomach. It was somewhere between warm and hot but not scalding. When most of the chocolate had dripped off the strawberry, Blaine dipped it into the fondue again and again let it dribble onto Kurt, making patterns of diamonds. After a few trips to the fondue pot, the strawberry had served its purpose—Kurt moaned when Blaine bit into it and set the end of it aside. Then he dipped his head down and began licking the diamonds off Kurt's stomach. Kurt bucked his hips up involuntarily a few times and his hands settled on Blaine's shoulders and neck, so when Blaine moved farther down Kurt's body, his fingers found themselves instead in Blaine's curls. Kurt gasped and tightened his fingers in Blaine's hair when Blaine fit a finger between the band of Kurt's boxer briefs and his skin. Blaine ran his finger slowly across the waistband, from one side of Kurt to another, and then with both hands, he tugged Kurt's boxer briefs down, revealing his almost embarrassingly hard cock.

Kurt writhed as Blaine licked a stripe up from the base of Kurt's cock to the head, and then slurped at the head, sucking it into his mouth. Kurt let out a whoosh of air and his stomach contracted. Blaine pushed his hands onto Kurt's hips and held them down as he lifted up and then took Kurt's cock completely into his mouth.

Kurt's brain exploded. Blaine sucked and worked at those most sensitive parts of Kurt that he had to have remembered from countless times doing this ten years before. Kurt came completely undone in Blaine's mouth, and his hands tugged at Blaine's hair. Blaine sucked up and down Kurt's cock and he took one of his hands off Kurt's hip to grasp around the base of Kurt's cock where his lips couldn't quite reach. He let his fingers trace over Kurt's testicles and Kurt tensed, his hips bucking uncontrollably as he felt himself coming to the edge.

"Blaine—oh—god, Blaine—oh my—god—Blaine—" Kurt gasped and moaned as Blaine expertly brought Kurt to the end of his tether.

At the last second, Blaine took his mouth off Kurt long enough to say, "I _know _you," before sucking again on the head of his cock. With a cry, Kurt came into Blaine's mouth, and Blaine sucked on him until he was dry. Kurt's mind was a complete blank except for Blaine, Blaine, Blaine… Blaine was everything. He moaned as he came down from his orgasm and then squirmed a little from oversensitivity. Blaine took his mouth off Kurt's cock and then crawled up onto Kurt and kissed his neck gently.

"Let me take care of _you_," Kurt murmured into Blaine's curly hair, and then his hand snaked down and into Blaine's boxers, grabbing at his cock and getting enough lubricant from the precome on the head to began working his hand up and down Blaine. Blaine let out a moan from deep inside and began thrusting his hips up into Kurt's hands.

"I'm so—close," he whispered brokenly, his lips just set against Kurt's neck as he panted, unable to form them into kisses. With his free hand, Kurt raked his fingernails across Blaine's back and Blaine arched into Kurt's hand. Kurt stroked him more quickly just a few more times and then, groaning and biting into Kurt's skin, Blaine came all over his hand, jerking his hips. Kurt stroked him through it and then pulled his hand out of Blaine's boxers and brought it up to his mouth. He licked tentatively at the come on his hand, smiling as he realized he remembered the taste.

Blaine moaned into Kurt's neck and then lifted his head to kiss at the side of Kurt's mouth. Kurt tilted onto his side a little and wrapped his arms around Blaine, pulling him in close. Blaine in turn put one arm under Kurt's neck and the other around the small of his back, then fit his legs through Kurt's to they were entwined as closely as they could be as two separate people.

Part of Kurt wanted to brush his teeth and wash his face and clear the fondue pot away, but the other part of him, the more important part, the part that hadn't let go of Blaine all those years, insisted he stay where he was and fall asleep in his lover's arms.


	8. Chapter 8

**PART EIGHT: WHILE YOUR HEAD IS CLEAR**

Light was just beginning to touch the sky when Kurt woke up. He groaned a little as he shifted and felt his back crack in several different places. As his brain came awake, he noted his chest and stomach was sticky. Immediately, then, he remembered why: chocolate and come. He grinned in spite of himself and became aware of Blaine curled up behind him. Their legs were still wrapped together but Blaine had his arms curled up close to his body, his hands in fists, as if protecting himself. Kurt sighed. He hoped he could prove to Blaine how serious he was about this, mend both their hearts and loosen those balled-up fists enough to hold hands.

Kurt stretched his arms above his head and sighed at the way his muscles and joints popped. He flexed, enjoying the stretch. He hadn't properly exercised for a while and made a mental note to pick it up again… especially if more of his nights ended like they had the previous evening.

Kurt twisted around and studied Blaine more closely. He was still asleep. There was a dark mark on the corner of his jaw and Kurt leaned in to determine if it was a hickey or dried chocolate. When he discovered it to be the former, Kurt felt a swelling in his chest he hadn't experienced in years. He felt incredibly bodily full, as if he were taking a huge breath and just holding it forever, letting the oxygen filter into his brain and leave him in a state of euphoria. He tried to remember the last guy he had slept with that had given him this feeling the morning _after_ instead of at the club, in the prelude _before_. There had been a couple who lasted more than a few months, but he'd never felt so sure of himself with them as he did here, with Blaine.

He looked at the clock on the nightstand and saw it was only a little past five. He was supposed to meet with Leonard at the warehouse before lunch to discuss which rug he would purchase. Kurt furrowed his brow, annoyed he still needed to figure that out. He hadn't so much as glanced at those rugs the night before on his way into the bedroom with Blaine. Blaine. _Blaine_. Kurt looked back at the man sleeping beside him.

With the hand that wasn't propping him up, Kurt reached out and touched the center of Blaine's forehead lightly with the pad of his index finger. He was warm and his skin soft. Kurt slowly and carefully set the rest of his fingers down across the arch of Blaine's forehead until his pinky was resting by the outside corner of Blaine's right eye. He studied Blaine's face under his fanned-out fingers, noting the contrast between his milky pale skin and Blaine's tan hadn't changed much over ten years. He let his fingers glide down the side of Blaine's face until they were cradling his cheek and chin. He was gorgeous sleeping. That also hadn't changed. Kurt impulsively let his thumb touch to Blaine's lower lip and rub, gently, from one side to the next. Then, pulling his hand away, Kurt curiously put his thumb in his mouth to taste Blaine—and with a chuckle from deep inside him he recognized the taste of his own come. Blaine still tasted like him. Kurt almost wrinkled his nose, thinking, _gross_, but it was nothing a shower and the brushing of teeth wouldn't wash away. _Though maybe I don't want him to wash it away_, he thought absently, running his fingers loosely through Blaine's hair, his fingernails scraping Blaine's scalp lightly.

Blaine moaned softly in his sleep and started to turn over onto his back. Kurt pulled his hand up and let Blaine finish moving around, then rest his hand on Blaine's chest over his heart. He could feel the steady and sure beating of that heart, that heart he had so coldly abused. Shaking his head slightly at himself, Kurt bit his lip and then slowly eased off the bed. He realized he was naked and considered, briefly, putting his boxer briefs back on but didn't see the point, really.

It was then that he noticed the tray of fruit, most of it going brown from exposure to air, and the fondue pot of chocolate. The dry chocolate, Kurt suspected, would not make a good breakfast, but he scooped up a handful of the rest of the fruit and popped a piece into his mouth on his way into the suite parlor.

He walked around until he was standing in front of the rugs, finishing the rest of the fruit. Kurt pulled in a deep breath and let it out slowly. He closed his eyes and pulled to mind the room the rug would be going in. He imagined the twin lamps he had already picked out, the piano the Duchess had asked get moved from the library into that room, the curtains he had hung himself just a week before, and the glorious antique loveseat he had picked out himself. He was waiting to get the coffee table and the rest of the room seating until he had the rug picked, but there was still a lot to go on, a lot he had to match without matching too garishly. Kurt opened his eyes and gasped.

Blaine was standing in front of him sleepily, rubbing one of his eyes with the heel of his left hand. He had also apparently decided not to put his boxers back on, and he smiled sheepishly at Kurt. Blaine laid his right hand on Kurt's hip heavily, with surety and a smidge of possessiveness. Kurt curled a corner of his mouth into a smile and stepped forward, instinctively wrapping his arms around Blaine's neck and burying his face into the side of his head. He breathed in deep and then kissed his curls before pulling back slightly and looking down into Blaine's face.

"Good morning," he whispered, then grimaced and put one of his hands over his mouth. "Sorry. Morning breath."

"Whatever," Blaine said back, then pulled Kurt's hand away and leaned up slightly to kiss him. He hummed a little and then licked along Kurt's bottom lip. "You taste like apples," he said accusingly.

Kurt laughed. "I ate some of that fruit. Can't work on an empty stomach."

Blaine raised an eyebrow and then looked down and realized he was standing on one of the rugs. As if the rug was lava, Blaine got on his toes and leapt lightly off the rug, dragging Kurt sideways a bit with him.

"It's all right. Rugs are made to be walked on," Kurt said. He looked down at the rug Blaine had been standing on. It was the one with the grid of lines and squares, sort of a contemporary design but the color was steeped in the right time period for the room. A man could get lost in that grid, the way the lines were staggered they looked like boxes within boxes within infinite boxes, away into the abyss of the rug. And yet—it also reminded him, suddenly, of the plaid on his dad's shirt one night when he was little and crying into the sleeve because he had just lost his mom and nothing would ever be okay again. And also—it reminded him of a map of New York City, a particular map he had on his first trip there for nationals in glee club his junior year, and running his finger along the lines of blocks and blocks of streets with names he was eager to memorize, as he spoke softly into his phone to Blaine at home in Ohio.

Kurt felt Blaine's hand in his and just _knew_, suddenly, what was right. He turned quickly and then snapped his arm toward him, pulling Blaine in against him and smashing his lips against Blaine's, kissing fiercely, protectively. Blaine whimpered a little in surprise and broke off the kiss, gasping.

"Is this real?" Blaine asked, his eyes studying Kurt's face.

Kurt nodded. "I want you. Always. I need you."

Blaine bit his lip a little and smiled soft. "Then take me."

Blaine wrapped his arms around Kurt's torso and then slid his hands up Kurt's back until they were grasping his shoulders. He couldn't pull Kurt close enough—Kurt pushed one of his legs needily between Blaine's, trying to get their bodies touching as much as possible, but he had misjudged how balanced Blaine was, and they started to topple over. Before they fell completely, Kurt managed to buckle his knees and hold onto Blaine's body enough to lay him roughly but not painfully onto the rug. He finally had the contact he wanted, stretched out on top of Blaine, and he shifted his hips slightly so that his legs were twined around Blaine's and his cock and Blaine's were side-by-side, tight between their two bodies. With a strangled moan, Kurt attacked Blaine's throat with his lips and teeth while he rocked his body against Blaine's, getting the friction he knew they both needed.

Blaine gasped out Kurt's name and his hands pushed down Kurt's back to his butt. Blaine squeezed and Kurt sucked harder on Blaine's collar bone, forcing out a loud moan from Blaine.

They were bucking against each other desperately, pre-come easily coating their cocks and making their rutting easier but still _not close enough_. Blaine tightened his grip on Kurt's butt and tried to pull him against his hips harder. Then, out of primal need, Blaine's fingers trailed down to press against Kurt's entrance.

Kurt whimpered out of need and pressed up against Blaine's fingers, but Blaine stilled his exploration and just grinned crookedly up at him.

"_What_?" Kurt demanded, slightly unhinged.

"I just…" Blaine lifted his hips up a little to push into Kurt. He rolled his hips and Kurt groaned, again trying to press back into Blaine's fingers. Blaine, frustratingly, kept them where they were. "I just really missed you," he finally said, leaning his head up and pressing a deep kiss onto Kurt's lips. It was almost chaste after the attacking of mouths they had been doing, and Kurt felt his entire body, mind and soul melt away into Blaine.

"I missed you too," Kurt murmured against Blaine's lips, and the exchange, the way it was said—the tone exactly the same as _I love you_ and _I love you too_ like that day nearly ten years ago in the Lima Bean after Kurt came back from nationals and spilled his stories and dreams out to Blaine over a medium drip and grande nonfat mocha.

Blaine laughed a little and pressed soft kisses against Kurt's lips, and then the corner of his mouth, down to his jaw, and then up the line of his jaw to his ear, where he licked the shell of Kurt's ears. It felt _filthy_ and incredible, and Kurt threaded his hands into and pulled Blaine's hair as Blaine whispered, "Do you have any lube?"

Kurt nodded and gestured helplessly into the bedroom. "I always keep some in my bathroom stuff."

"But that's so far away," Blaine moped half-jokingly, and Kurt giggled against his cheek.

"Close your eyes," Kurt whispered, "and don't open them until I come back."

Kurt couldn't see his eyes, but he felt Blaine's lashes sweep his face lightly as his eyelids closed and he felt a flutter go over his heart as he pressed his hands against the rug and leveraged himself up and off of Blaine. He almost whined at the loss of Blaine's skin and breath and pre-come and sweat against his body, but jogged lightly into the bedroom and then the bathroom, and rifled through his bag of shampoo and conditioner and hairspray and everything else anyone could ever, ever need—why did he have so many little tubes of products that _weren't lube_ for god's sake—before he found what he was looking for, as well as a condom, and almost ran back into the parlor.

Blaine was still lying there on the rug, his eyes closed, his mouth open slightly as he panted. Kurt felt a jolt go to his cock as he saw that Blaine was almost lazily stroking his erection. Kurt knew he could have stood there indefinitely watching Blaine get himself off, but he also knew _he_ wanted to be the one making it happen even more, so he knelt down over Blaine and pushed his arms up and away from his sides.

"Hey," Blaine said, half-protestation, half-greeting.

"Naughty," Kurt replied, squeezing one of Blaine's wrists.

"You only said no looking, not no touching."

Kurt chuckled. "That's true … but I want to be the one doing the touching."

Blaine shivered underneath him and Kurt spread his legs across Blaine's lap, straddling him and leaning down to kiss at the underside of his jaw. One of Blaine's hands escaped Kurt's and snaked down to Kurt's ass, where he resumed the exploration he had started. Without stopping his kissing, Kurt pressed the bottle of lube into Blaine's other hand. He half-noticed Blaine taking the cap off and coating the fingers of one of his hands—his attention was diverted as he sucked on the hickey he had left on Blaine's jaw the previous night. He heard Blaine gasp as he ran his teeth over the mark, and then Kurt felt Blaine press a finger against his entrance teasingly.

Kurt whined and stopped mouthing at Blaine's jaw for a moment as his brain short-circuited. He went soft against Blaine, slack-jawed and just panting a little into Blaine's neck as Blaine slowly pushed his finger inside Kurt.

The first time they had done this, it had hurt and Kurt had had to stop several times before they could even get one finger in. But that was several years and several lovers ago, and Kurt knew his body a little better. He bore down onto Blaine's finger and only hissed out of the sharp pleasurable burn he felt, not pain. He was able to start kissing again at Blaine's neck as Blaine worked the finger inside Kurt, stretching him out. Kurt rocked down, almost fucking himself on Blaine's finger, whimpering a little when it was not enough.

Blaine knew what Kurt needed, knew it like he knew Kurt, and slowly added a second finger. The burn Kurt felt had turned into just a warm heat that was building very gradually in his lower body. He twined his fingers into Blaine's curls and pulled a little, bringing Blaine's head back so he had easier access to his clavicle. As Kurt began adding another hickey to Blaine's neck, Blaine scissored his two fingers inside Kurt until he was stretched enough for a third. Kurt bore down onto the third easily and started rocking harder now, helplessly fucking himself on Blaine's fingers.

"_Jesus_, Kurt," Blaine groaned, scissoring his fingers and probing a little until he found the spot Kurt desperately wanted him to find. As Blaine pressed against that nub of nerves, Kurt shuddered heavily and bit back a cry of pleasure, seeing stars for just a second.

"Please, Blaine, please, please, please," Kurt chanted against Blaine's neck. He pushed back against Blaine's fingers hard, and Blaine got the hint.

He took his fingers out and Kurt whimpered at the loss, but then heard Blaine rip open the condom wrapper and squeeze more lube out of the tube to coat his cock. Kurt's begging _please_s had ceased to become words and were just syllables, muttered in rhythm against Blaine's sweaty skin, when he felt the head of Blaine's cock push against his entrance, and then syllables became just consonants and babbling and moans.

Kurt pushed down as Blaine pushed up and then finally, finally, they were together, as bodily close as they could be. Kurt knew, somewhere deep inside his heart, that just as Blaine was the first person to do this with him, he would be the last as well. He kissed against Blaine's neck again, and felt Blaine strain his neck up so that he could kiss the top of Kurt's head. Then Blaine's hands were pulling Kurt's face up to meet his. As Kurt sat up a little, Blaine's cock drove even deeper inside him and he cried out in pleasure, pushing down as much as possible. Then as his lips met Blaine's in a sweet, long, perfect kiss, Blaine started to move his hips up and down.

Kurt moved his hips in harmony, meeting him on every stroke. He tilted at a slightly different angle and suddenly Blaine was hitting his prostate on every thrust. Kurt couldn't stifle his cries and didn't want to, wanted the world to know Blaine Anderson was his again, and he was Blaine's. One of Blaine's hands left Kurt's face and slid down around his cock, pumping in time with his thrusts. Kurt felt himself lost completely in this abyss of Blaine, just letting the pleasure wash over him again and again, losing count of how many times he was able to pant out Blaine's name amidst babbled consonants and high moans. He felt the heat in his lower body intensify, and he knew he was close.

Blaine's thrusts were becoming less rhythmic and more erratic and Kurt knew he was also close. He fucked himself on Blaine harder a few times and then felt Blaine still just briefly before he shuddered and came, still thrusting, but with less driven purpose. Blaine's eyes opened wide and he pumped Kurt's cock a few more times as his lips attacked the spot behind Kurt's ear that he must have remembered from high school—and then Kurt was coming fast and hot between them. Blaine stroked him through his orgasm, and then Kurt collapsed on top of Blaine. Blaine pulled out of Kurt carefully and slid the condom off, tying it at the top and tossing it away from them, off the rug.

They were so unbelievably sweaty and coated in come and even still some chocolate from the previous night. Kurt wanted to shower but instead his eyes closed and he fell asleep plastered on top of Blaine, his lover, his—yes, definitely—boyfriend, and maybe—when they moved to New York—his future husband.

In the moment before he lost consciousness, Kurt felt Blaine's lips breathe a very quiet, "I'll never say goodbye to you," against him—and then they both dropped off, dreamers on a grid of possibilities.

**EPILOGUE**

It was a month before Blaine moved to New York. They shared Kurt's crappy little apartment in the East Village until the lease was up, and then they moved into a much nicer place a few blocks over.

With assistance from the Duchess, Blaine found a very cushy job at a school library not far from their neighborhood. Kurt often came home from a day working in Manhattan to find Blaine curled up asleep on their couch, a book in one hand but the other open, waiting for Kurt to fill it with his. Kurt liked to watch him napping before he went into the kitchen to make dinner. Though, sometimes he just ordered Japanese and they watched old Jackie Chan movies together and pretended to be drunken masters.

As for the rugs? The red one went back to Leonard. Kurt decided the Duchess's room needed regality, and so she got the one with the flowers and leaves and elegant patterns. And the one with the grid, the one they finally got up from that morning, just to stumble into the shower and do it all over again—that one?

When Kurt would watch Blaine sleeping, he was framed by the black leather of the back of the sofa above him and on either side, and of course the rug with the grid on the floor in front of the couch. It had a coffee table on it now, for when Kurt schooled Blaine in Scrabble, but it wasn't too heavy to move aside when they felt like reliving the day they found each other again.


End file.
